You need more than a firm handshake to turn leads into clients

Confirming the first sales meeting with a highly qualified, relevant prospect is a giant win – it goes without saying. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Scheduling that first appointment should be far from the start of your journey of getting to know them. Before you enter the discussion, you need to have taken the necessary steps to prime yourself for the opportunity in front of you. How well do you truly know the prospect? Are you even ready for the handshake?

Yes, the lead has journeyed through the marketing pipeline. They’ve engaged with touchpoints, consumed information, and left a trail of data in their wake. But while invaluable, there’s still a large gap between this and a meaningful, personalised sales dialogue. In sales, you need to go beyond marketing intelligence to understand what you do and don’t know about the prospect – from their appetite for your value proposition to their expectations for the initial discussion.

Your goal is to develop and use a strong pre-sales strategy. Specifically, one that fixes the disconnect between sales and marketing and equips account executives with the intel to flex their undoubted skills in the right way, with the right people. From digging deep into a prospect’s pain points to navigating cultural differences, here’s how to arm yourself for the nuances of each conversation and opportunity. After all, first impressions count in B2B. You need to make the best one possible.

Moving from marketing intelligence to a 360° view of each prospect

Before you enter a sales discussion, you should have such a thorough understanding of the person or people you’re meeting that it feels as if you’re walking into an exam with a cheat sheet. You need to make them feel seen, heard, and important from the very beginning, so they know that they can trust you to soothe their metaphorical pain.

A foundational part of this is knowing how to take this first discussion from another marketing conversation to a needs-based one. They’ve heard your marketing messages and are now in front of you – what’s next? Should your first contact be a fact-finding exercise or a full-blown demonstration? Does the prospect know what their pain points are or do you need to guide them towards the realisation? Preparing for the discussion means knowing as much as you can about the prospect so that you can take control, all while remaining customer-centric. After all, as every good salesperson knows, listening and learning are more important than speaking at this point in the journey.

Gathering this level of sales intelligence can be a huge challenge, largely due to the gap that exists between marketing and sales in many businesses. The solution? A pre-sales strategy that bridges both sides of the canyon and allows you to gather the following intel.

The who

Before you meet a prospect, start by understanding who they are and what they do. Look beyond their job title to establish their role in real terms. What and who are they responsible for and how does this impact the wider organisation? Crucially, do they have buying authority or influence over the business’s investments?

There’s a high chance that you’ll need to gather intelligence on more than one person. In fact, according to Gartner, buying groups for complex B2B solutions typically consist of between six and 10 decision-makers. You should also consider the dynamics between each of the key players. Do their objectives align or is there a disconnect that needs to be resolved before you progress?

If you’re meeting a lead in a new market or territory, make sure that your pre-sales strategy prepares you for this. There may be language barriers, cultural expectations, and country-specific regulations that you need to be aware of to make sure that you provide a suitable solution (and to contextualise your discussions).

The what

Understanding your prospects’ wants and desires is also crucial. True customer-centricity relies on not only identifying and anticipating their needs, but being equipped to provide the most appropriate solution at every step. For this, you need to understand the root cause of their desires.

What exacerbates the challenge is that they might not have identified their pain points yet, or even fully understood just how deeply they’re affecting the organisation. Make sure you’re prepared to guide the conversation towards the areas that your prospect doesn’t yet know – alongside the areas they don’t know that they don’t know.

With a laser-sharp understanding of their pain points, you can determine whether, and how you have the capabilities to overcome them. You should also consider how your value proposition is seen as relevant to them. Your marketing intelligence might allow you to make assumptions about this, but it needs clarifying before you have a sales conversation.

The how

It’s important to think beyond the initial sales call. You might be in contact with a decision-maker with the credentials and the authority to purchase your product or service, but what does the future of your relationship look like? Do their budgetary and timeframe expectations align with yours? Are there any roadblocks which might prevent you from working together effectively now or in the future?

For instance, research from Deloitte’s 2021 ‘Close the expectation gap with your B2B customers’ shows that more than half of buyers would stop working with a seller that doesn’t prioritise post-sale face-to-face interactions. Thinking ahead to anticipate and overcome friction like this needs to be a crucial part of your internal account development.

Although you can’t predict the outcome of every sales meeting, a pre-sales strategy that profiles your client and their expectations can strengthen your case. It allows you to make sure that you’re only connecting with the people who can and want to learn more about your business. It also helps you to take control of the conversation so that you don’t lose your lead’s interest (or lose them to a competitor).

Invest in your pre-sales strategy

Designing and implementing a pre-sales strategy that enables you to collect both marketing and sales intelligence is, of course, a huge undertaking and challenge. After all, with two different sets of priorities and skills, there’s often an inherent disconnect between the teams.

While marketing’s expertise is better suited to generating and nurturing leads than gathering in-depth sales intel, account executives don’t necessarily have the time to take this off their hands. Either way, there’s a great deal of heavy lifting involved even before you enter a sales call with a highly qualified lead.

So how do you bridge this gap without putting additional strain on your teams? This is where Pure Business Development steps in.

Pure Business Development: qualify leads without the heavy lifting

Equip your account executives with the confidence and intel to make the most of every sales opportunity with Pure Business Development. By becoming an extension or augmentation of your team, we can apply our methodologies to your processes and act as the sturdy bridge between your marketing and sales priorities.

As your professional partners, we’ll work proactively and quickly to provide you with sales opportunities and confirmed meetings with decision-makers. We’ll qualify each prospect personally, diving deep into their pain points and desires, and arm your account executives with a fully informed, 360-degree profile. Nimble, category intelligent, and multilingual, we can also spring into action across a range of industries and territories.

Book your introductory call to find out how. All that’s left is for you to perfect your handshake.